New HP Proliant MicroServer – a decent vSphere lab server candidate?

As I mentioned in a blog post a while ago the popular HP Proliant ML115 range of servers was going end of life, with no G6 model to ever see the light of day. This is a real shame as the HP Proliant ML115 G5 offered exceptional value for money indeed, with a quad core AMD Opteron processor and the ability to run a decent work or lab vSphere environment from it.

There were rumours that there would be successor to the ML115 G5 but it was to take a different guise with a lower specification CPU and would not be called an ML115. Anything else definite was not known….

… Until recently that is when HP announced the new AMD CPU based Proliant MicroServer whose specification matches the limited information previously known about the successor to the ML115 G5.

So what is this new HP MicroServer, what is it’s specification and would it be any good for a work or home lab vSphere server? Also is it really worthy of sharing the Proliant name with such classic Proliant models as the DL360/365 and DL380/385?

However before we continue I feel I should take the time to put in perspective HP’s apparent recommended use for this new ‘multi-purpose server’ offering. HP’s intention is to directly target the lucrative 37 million (source: The Register) SMB business market space with ten users of less where IT know-how or permanent staff are often limited or missing with the HP MicroServer claiming easy set up and configuration functionality.

The Configuration

Probably the most noticeable thing about new HP MicroServer is its size..

It’s, well..micro sized. The clue is in the name. ;) HP call this form factor, Ultra Micro Tower.

To be exact it is 10.5 x 8.3 x 10.2 in (26.7x 21.0 x 26.0 cm) (HxWxD) which is a pretty small form factor for any self respecting PC let alone one claiming to be a ‘server’. This form factor will definitely be attractive to those SMB companies or businesses (eg: branch offices) lacking the required space for running anything larger or perhaps intending to run their server in the actual open office space. But for me and no doubt plenty of others out there this form factor and the quoted quiet operating noise levels of 23.8 dBA (which is pretty darn quiet in anyone’s book) is, on the surface, a tasty looking option for use in a home lab environment. But it’s not all about the size (is it?) let’s take a look at some of main specifications of this new HP MicroServer.

CPU: The CPU powerhouse(?) driving this server is not really what you’d ever expect to see in a machine claiming to be a server with its dual core 1.3Ghz AMD Athlon II NEO N36L processor which would normally be seen in a laptop or netbook PC. This isn’t a processor that you’ve probably seen around too much so let’s take a look at its capabilities apart from its obvious speed (1.3GHz) and dual cores:

I have highlighted those processor features which are either required by VMware vSphere or in the case of ‘PowerNow!’ is a nice to have. So technically the AMD Athlon II NEO N36L processor found in the HP Proliant MicroServer should be able to run vSphere ok, though the most glaringly obvious question in all of this is the dual 1.3Ghz CPU Cores up to the job of supporting and running an average vSphere lab environment?

Well, of course the answer to this is… it depends. As no doubt all of you who run a production or lab VMware vSphere environment will in most cases confirm the amount of CPU utilisation is generally quite low with memory being the first ESX/ESXi host physical resource being consumed, meaning that a lowly utilised vSphere lab environment with 4-5 VMs would probably be ok running on the MicroServer in most instances. Though increase the workloads of the VMs running on the server and the CPU performance could quickly change for the worse.

Memory: The first thing to know about the HP MicroServer is that it only has two memory slots thereby instantly limiting your options when it comes to adding affordable capacity memory DIMMs to maximise the available memory. The maximum amount of memory that you can insert and run is 8GB which is achieved via 2 x 4GB PC3-10600E DDR UDIMMs. You receive 1 x 1GB PC3-10600E DDR UDIMM with the MicroServer as standard but lets face it what can you really do with that whether the server is used as a virtual host or running an OS such as Windows Server 2008 straight on the bare metal? In my opinion HP would have been better removing all the memory and dropping the price slightly allowing the purchaser to add their own desired memory capacity and configuration.

Below is an outline of the main allowed memory configurations:

Storage Controller & Hard Disks: Detailed information currently available on the onboard storage controller is somewhat light with the exact storage controller chipset being used unknown. Chances are the disk controller could be the one seen in the ML110 G6 model of Proliant, this being the B110i, all we do know from the HP Proliant MicroServer QuickSpecs is that it can support up to four SATA 7.2K based non-hot plug disks in either an embedded RAID 0 or 1 configuration. What happened to RAID 5 HP? This isn’t even available as an optional extra via an unlocking code or similar.

*** UPDATE: Thanks to Daniel from HP (Twitter: @DanielAtHP) for confirming that the HP Proliant Microserver doesn’t use the B110i disk controller but in fact a SATA disk/RAID controller built into the AMD chipset.

Although I don’t know for sure I think it will be safe to assume that the embedded RAID will not be compatible with ESX/ESXi as this is what we saw with the default embedded RAID found in the HP Proliant ML110 and ML115 models of server. I’d like to be wrong on this one.

HP quote the use of their own SATA branded hard disks in the MicroServer though it is not entirely clear from the HP quickspec whether you could use cheaper commodity SATA 7.2K drives instead though I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t. The standard MicroServer configuration comes with a single 160GB SATA drive.

HP claim that a maximum of 8TB (4 x 2TB, RAID 0) can be added into the MicroServer providing adequate storage even in a working RAID 1 configuration (4TB).

CD/DVD: Although shown in the picture above it should be pointed out that the DVD drive is an optional extra and does not come with the standard base model, at least not the one I was looking at.

Network: There is a single embedded NC107i PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Server Adapter which is on the VMware vSphere Compatibility List. This single gigabit NIC combined with a single or dual port gigabit NIC expansion card added into on of the expansion slots (see below) would meet the requirements of most ESX/ESXi host configurations especially when VLANs are used.

Expansion Slots: Below is an outline of the two expansion slots which can be found in the MicroServer, which for an average vSphere lab server is sufficient as all you’d generally be looking at inserting into one of these PCI-e slots would be a network expansion card. Note: due to the small form factor of this server half height, half length cards should be used.

USB Ports: When it comes to USB ports HP definitely didn’t scrimp with four USB 2.0 slots on the front of the MicroServer, two on the back and one internally that HP indicates can be used with a USB based backup device. I’m not sure why the majority of the USB ports are on the front of the server as any permanently attached USB devices such as external hard disks or dongles would usually be better off being connected around the back so there is less chance of the USB connection being knocked. But the fact HP have provided this many USB ports is a good thing in my opinion.

Power: The HP MicroServer is powered by a single 200 Watt non-hot pluggable power supply. As would be expected in an entry level server there is no option to add a redundant power supply. The low power (15W) CPU definitely contributes to keeping the running cost of the MicroServer to a minimum, with HP quoting that a fully loaded configuration only consuming an impresssive 70W of power.

Operating Systems: HP have Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux highlighted as being the operating systems to run on the MicroServer, so in fairness they are not claiming that it is supposed to be considered for as a virtualization host. But us home lab virtualization techies cannot help ourselves when we see a small, form factor entry level server hardware being released.

Warranty: 1 Year

But would it make a good VMware vSphere lab server?

Once again, it depends… From the specifications provided by HP, it would probably not make for a good vSphere lab server in most instances though it really comes down to what virtualized workloads you want to run on the MicroServer. For 4-5 average VMs not doing anything too heavy then you’ll probably find that it will be ok (small print: I haven’t tried one of these servers yet so this is just speculation on my part based on the hardware specification of the MicroServer) assuming you are running 4-8GB of memory and perhaps running the VMs off of attached NFS or iSCSI storage.

For me the MicroServer has the potential for being a great little lab server though falls down in a couple of key areas – firstly the CPU is rather on the light side even if running Windows Server with up to 10 users accessing it for tasks such as SMB email, finance package, SharePoint, etc. Secondly another 2 memory DIMM sockets would have been good – what about losing one of the PCI-e expansion slots to allow for a couple of extra extra slots? Then the last point being the price. The quoted HP price here in the UK is £219+VAT which is only slightly less than the £240+VAT approx price of an ML110 G6 which has 4 DIMMs slots, comes with a DVD drive and has a faster CPU. What you are paying for with the MicroServer, which for Shuttle PC fans like myself appreciate, is its small size.

Something that did catch my eye is that HP has used the word ‘series’ (see image below) on it’s MicroServer web page indicating that there may end up being more than one model of MicroServer, which if true, means they will hopefully address some of the short comings mentioned above. I must point out again that I fully appreciate that this server wasn’t designed as a vSphere lab server though even as a Windows Server 2008 box it will perhaps struggle a little with some workloads even in a >10 user branch or small office type environment.

After this is all said and done however I still find myself really wanting to get my hands on an HP Proliant MicroServer just to see what it is actually capable of. I love the form factor and the concept of what HP is trying to do here, though I just think they are a little short of the mark in a couple of key areas (ie: CPU and memory capacity) when combined with the price. If you don’t have to run workloads which require high levels of CPU horsepower the requirement to purchase a DVD drive and semi-expensive 2 or 4GB DIMMs due to a lack of available memory sockets still brings the cost of this little server more in line to to that of a server from HP’s ML range of Proliants such as the ML110 G6 which definitely, in my opinion, offers better bang for buck.

About Simon Seagrave

Simon is a UK based Virtualization, Cloud & IT Technology Evangelist working as a Senior Technology Consultant and vSpecialist for EMC. He loves working in the ever changing IT industry & spends most of his time working with Virtualization, Cloud & other Enterprise IT based technologies, in particular VMware, EMC and HP products.

I would go for 3 x ML115 Quad Cores without a doubt.. You get a more powerful CPU, extra cores and would be able to use cheaper lower capacity memory DIMMS to take each of the servers up to 4GB or 8GB.

If you are looking at buying some ML115’s from ServersPlus I would get in there quickl, as I was talking to them the other day and they indicated that they have almost sold out of their remaining stock. The other alternative to a ML115 G5 or MicroServer would be an ML110 G6 (non-Xeon CPU model) which comes in at about the £240’ish mark. Though the ML115 G5 still offers best bang for buck in my opinion.

One point of note is that if you do end up getting the ML115 G5’s then shop around and get the best price on the memory you want to take them up to as due to the ML115 G5 running DDR2 this memory will start to get expensive as it is no longer mainstream (ie: has been superceeded by DDR3).

The Microserver looks almost ideal for an entry-level file server: small, quiet, low power consumption, 4 drives, ECC memory, inexpensive. If HP have left it as a vanilla x64 machine then it should support commodity SATA drives: a big plus for this lowest market segment. Indeed it might well run Windows 7 in a Homegroup rather nicely, given the proximity of Server 2008 and W7 these days.

The usual problem with commodity disks of course is that the vendor won’t supply disk caddies, power cabling and data connectors without the purchase of expensive branded disks. Enterprise diskery is surely inappropriate with the AMD chipset RAID here, since it seems unlikely that HP will have asked AMD to alter the RAID controller to negociate additional functions with HP disk firmware.

Looking at the Maintenance and Service Guide it appears that the data connector is a 4 port mini SAS type breaking out to 4 standard SATA connections. Perhaps it will not be worthwhile sub-equipping such an inexpensive box so by ordering one HP drive we would receive 4 power and data connectors in this instance. That just leaves the problem of 3 additional disk caddies (any ideas?).

RAM…
To keep the cost of a VMware test lab as low as possible, I confirm 4GB non-ECC memory modules works on both MicroServer (2x4GB) and ML110G6 (4x4Gb)
Tests were made with Corsair XMS3 PC3-10600U (CMX4GXM1A1333C9) modules.

DVD…
To add an optical drive on the MicroServer, your need a MOLEX-to-SATA power cable

Power consumption…
Microserver measured between 31W and 36W
ML110g6 xeon3430 measured between 46W and 75W

USB…
ESXi4.1 is immediately installable on local HDD but not on a 2GB USB stick ( CD/DVD image error message after USB destination selection).
There maight be a trick to solve this issue…

Slightly off topic, but for a non-server network engineer , i am looking for a DC for a test environment, to run Server 2003 as an OS
It would seem that only later OS’s are mentioned by HP in relation to this box
Would Server 2003 run ok on this box?

Tom, the reason they do not list it as running Server 2003 is that they only have 64 bit drivers for the box. I just installed SBS 2003 and the only issue I have so far is that I cannot find a driver for the SM Bus Controller. So, I am not sure if this is a drop dead issue for me or you yet, but I will update this post if I get this resolved.

IanB, I have had the server running for about 10 days and no issues. The two drivers I have not been able to find are the SM Bus controller and the video driver. I don’t even use the video as I remote into it, and when I did hook up a VGA monitor it looked fine and gave me at least 1200×800 if I recall. No problems from not having the bus controller running so far. I have three disks in there and all file transfer work has been smooth, all updates applied, and SBS 2003 working fine.

Ian, the system comes with drive caddies (and the screws for the hard drive and ODD you need to put in on the back of the front swing out cover- nice touch). All you need to do is buy standard SATA drives and they plug right in. I put in an old 750gb Seagate and 2 new Samsung 2 tb, no problems at all. It’s pleasantly small and quiet. No use in having a lab server that you can’t leave on all the time, and this is whisper quiet.

Jim R, the only problem you should have as far as 32 bit drivers is finding a driver for the Sm Bus and the video system. I have not found them yet, but system is running 42 bit without them.

As it turns out i was able to locate awindows 7 64 bit OS that i can use. Looks like that will work just fine for me. I think that as the 64 bit become more mainstream the 64 bit drivers for some of the legacy equipment will begin to appear.

I totally agree with what David was mentioning , great little server for the small SMB space and so so quiet.. Even quieter than my ML110/ML115’s, which are very quiet indeed. 🙂

Thanks to everyone for the great comments so far, keep them coming. It is really interesting to read what others are using this little MicroServer for. For my virtualization lab I’ll stick with my ML110 & ML115 G5 though like many this MicroServer has certainly caught my imagination on the many possibilities and uses that it could be put to. I just wish HP would drop the price to sub £200, this combined with the decrease in 4GB DIMM memory prices would make the MicroServer become more attractive (and affordable) still.

On a different note, I have had it on good authority from an HP insider that although this server is part of the HP MicroServer ‘series’ we may not be seeing additional models in the series for sometime yet. In the meantime though I’m sure we can find many uses for this model.

Very nice review of the HP Microserver, watched the vids too and there is stacks of info. I’m thinking of getting one and using it primarily as a media storage but also using xen or vmware to provide a couple of extra VM’s for dev servers and a few projects I want to contain, 2gb ram will be ample for my needs.

My question is how loud is it really? Im guessing the large fan is virtually silent, but what about the smaller 30mm? PSU fan? does that make much noise? Im currently using an old dell optiplex as a NAS behind the TV, do you think this will be as quiet?

It’s the quietest computer I have had, virtually silent. It’s in a closet 3 feet above my head and 2 feet over from my right ear, and I cannot hear it at all. I have Samsung 2 gb drives (HD204UI) in it and can’t even hear them when they are running.

There is a rebate available for UK purchases. The deal is if you buy the cd/dvd drive and a 3 year hp care plan you get a w2k8 r2 foundation os for free. That definately makes it a good deal for the uk…..nothing planned for the usa…only uk!

Does anyone have a link to a working driver for the SATA working with Windows 2003 Server.
And, how do I install Win 2003? Ive tried using nLite to bundle new drivers with the cd, is that the best way?

I used the drivers than came on the SBS 3003 disk and my SATA assembly works fine. I did not install RAID, but that is set up from the BIOS, I think. The RAID is powered from the SATA disk/RAID controller built into the AMD chipset. There is a little info the information in the article above.

Well I bought one and have configured it to RAID 1. That was a little difficult since HP didn’t say how to enable the RAID functionality in the boot setup! In any case this is accessed by going to boot setup (F10) and going to advanced then to IDE. Within this menu is the selection for RAID. With this enables upon re=boot at the prompt you type a Ctrl + F and in you go to the setup program. It’s fairly strightforward, but it appears that the setup reformates all SATA drives. Make sure you configure this BEFORE” you load the OS!

I also loaded windows 7 pro 64 bit without incident – worked great!!! The only issue I’ve come up with is that Java 2 Runtime Environment does not seem to work with AMD 64 bit machines – I think it’s a Java thing, they just need to address the AMD chipset and modify the program?

In setting up the OS, I was plesently surprised to see my wireless mouse and keyboard pick right up when I first booted!

I have to say for the money this is a great little workhorse. It out performs the Shuttle and is soooooooo quiet you have to look for the lights to tell if it is on!

Unfortunately I don’t have the HP MicroServer any more – I only had it on loan and had to return it. Though I’m sure one of the nice people reading this who do have a MicroServer will be able to help out and could publish the results in the comments here. 🙂

I’m going to add some information here as it looks the best subject about the Microserver.
I’ve been testing software RAID 5 (dynamic disk) on Windows 2008 R2 using 4x Maxtor 250GB 7200rpm drives. They are not the fastest drives around, but I’ve took them from an EMC AX100 just for testing purposes.
A single drive with write cache enabled does 60MB/sec sequential writes, in software RAID 5 I’m able to reach 50MB/sec sequential reads on the 4 drives. This is not that bad comparing to other reports of software RADI 5 on this NEO 2 processor would be sluggish.
Of course, to enable 50MB/sec you need t enable write cache in the properties of the drive on Windows, so you have a chance that something bad can happen in case of power loss.

Thanks for that information – interesting stuff indeed. It’s amazing how much difference turning on the cache makes, in my home lab I have splashed out and bought a small APC UPS for this very reason. 🙂

I’d be interested to know the sort of performance results you get from RAID 5 on FreeNAS. I may do the same with OpenFiler over the Christmas break.

>> and probably feed the box at least 2 drives (1 for ESXi and 1 for VM’s)

Colin,

(i) you don’t need a drive for ESXi, you can run it off a flash drive. You will need more than one disk for your VMs, however – unless you are running them all off a single drive as it is now and are satisfied with the results…

(ii) I tried running virtual Win 7 desktops on this and the CPU got saturated very quickly (I’d give it a maximum of 3 *usable* VMs). An SBS 2008 did run in a satisfactory manner in a VM, but I never got around to putting Exchange under any load to speak of. But, as always, YMMV.

I personally think that running those 5 VMs on the MicroServer even with 8GB of RAM installed may be pushing it a little. With W2K8 being much more of a memory resource hog than previous versions especially with E2K10 installed I think you’ll find your memory will be hitting the 8GB limit on the ESX/ESXi host much of the time which will create caching down to your single spindled disk. The disk is where I’m sure you’ll find the bottle neck if running the VMs you mention, at the end of the day it’ll come down to IOPS and since all the VMs will be running off of a single spindle you will only have 70-80 IOPS from this SATA drive to service the IO requests from all 5 VMs. However all is not lost as you could look at adding additional SATA disks and then distributing the VMs evenly and dependent on workload across them. Otherwise, depending on budget, you could look at adding an SSD which depending on the disk size requirements of your VMs would potentially provide you with IOPS your VMs will require.

In all of this, as I know you’ll be aware, you would be running a production environment on a disk(s) that are non-resilient (ie: no RAID) so I wouldn’t really recommend it unless you have a reliable backup solution in place and the business can afford a period of downtime in the event of a disk failure. Another option could be to look at a PCIe based RAID card and then fully populate the 4 drive bays of the MicroServer and run it in a RAID 5 or 1+0 configuration – this would provide you with closer to the IOPS requirements of you VMs AND provide you with disk resilience. Or…. (there is always an ‘or’ 🙂 ) you could, as Evgenij so rightly mentions, run ESXi off of a USB flash drive installed in the internal USB slot of the HP Microserver and then use an external SAN/NAS appliance such as an iomega IX4-200d to store and run the VMs from. I run an iomega IX4-200d in my lab environment at home and find it great for 4-6 VMs. This approach would also give you the ability to easily add an extra HP Microserver to the environment (and at 90 pounds ex VAT at the moment they are a bargain) should you find you need more CPU resource and then distribute the VMs over the two Microservers. The only downside being cost as you’d be looking at an extra Microserver and an Ix4 (or similar) and I know you mentioned you were quite keen on keeping the power costs of the environment down.

Although I have never tried it, I don’t see any reason why it wasn’t as long as you’d created a bootable USB stick with the W2K8 installation on it. It’d be a case of just telling the MicroServer to boot from the USB port first.

Do you know if the broadcom network adapter supports jumbo frame? I’ve tried a few times to increase from 1500 with latest drivers but no luck. There is no option to enable this on the driver itself, so I could figure out if there is a way or not to use it.

I have read thru your articles related to this MicroServer, and I have bought two of this server to setup my vmware lab. I upgraded the server to use 8GB maximum with DVD drive and additional harddrive. Everything is great as like you describe. Your article and video are absolutely helpful!! Many Thanks!

Now I find I need to get additional NIC in order to practise Vmotion/iSCSI on ESXi 4.1 and ESX 4.1 with Vcentre Server 4.1. However, I only found HP NC112T PCI Express Gigabit Server Adapter Part No.: 503746-B21 shown on World Wide spec for this server. It is single port PCI-E half height NIC.

But I want dual-port PCI-E nic for these servers. When I check different HP NIC, the compatibility list does not show Microserver except this NC112T. So far, I have found techhead article and another one from vsphere-land mentioned this server can support dual-port NIC. But I dont really know which card I can go for without wasting money. Please advise us. Many Thx!

Like Evenij, I have an HP NC360T which seems to work nicely in the Microserver. I have a couple of others and will also try those out and will let you know, though technically they should work ok with the Microserver (in the PCIe slot) and VMware ESX/ESXi 4.1.

Hello,
First I’d like to thank Simon for all the info on this site. The posts have been very helpful and so have the comments!

I have been looking for a home server for two main reasons:
1. Set up a file/media server for my home and more specifically my home office/studio
2. Expand my IT skills and gain some practical experience with VMWare, WS 2008, WHS 7 and have a play with domain controllers and Exchange in a Windows/Mac environment

After quite a bit of online research it seems the HP Proliant MicroServer seems is right option for me since I am mostly looking for a smallish quiet box and this is my first time. I plan to use VMWare ESXi.

I am trying to figure out exactly what I’ll need to get a proper set up going and would like to ask for your advice.

My questions to you are:
1. Any thoughts on the Firewire PCIe card? I have 3 Quadra Lacie drives I’d like to keep using as a daisy chain.
2. There’s a big prince difference between the single and dual port NIC. Would you recommend the dual one for future expandability? What would be the main advantages? Is there no real point buying this card for my initial setup?
3. How much HDD space would you suggest to run 2-3 virtual machines? I would like to recycle a 1 TB and a 500 GB drive. I would purchase another 1 TB drive and either another 500 GB or a 250 GB to setup 2 RAID 1 arrays: 1 for VMs and 1 for Data. Or is it not really worth doing a RAID 1 on the VMs drive?
4. Is this ok choice for a switch? I need 4+ port switch to replace the Time Machine that I am moving to another room
8 Ports NETGEAR Mini Switch ProSafe 8 ports 10/100 FS108 (CHF 39.50)
5. Do you have any advice for a first lab setup?

ESXi doesn’t like the onboard RAID, have to go with something like an Adaptec 2405 as mentioned elsewhere on Simon’s site. Trouble with that is that is chews up one of the two slots and leaves with just a x1 slot and there doesn’t appear (!!) to be lots of options for a NIC for that although there are some Intel ones that look like they’l work….I’ve got one (a dual port Intel Pro thing!!) on order which should arrive in the next day or two, let me know if you would like me to report back…

Time to order a couple and see if I can make use of those x1 slots I have sitting there and hopefully when my other Adaptec 2405 arrives I will be all done, both servers running with a decent specification….then I can get on with doing some C# multi-tier coding rather than this hardware stuff which has had me somewhat distracted for more days than I’d planned….

– your FireWire setup is not very likely to get detected by ESXi
– the onboard RAID is a fakeRAID so under ESXi it’s basically a 5-Port SATA controller. As Andy said, if you need RAID on this box, you’re giving away the 16x slot and some money
– you really want a Gigabit Ethernet switch for your lab
– whether a drive is worth mirroring is up to you, if you lose your lab due to a harddsik fault, you can practise redoing it 😉
– virtual machines need the same space as real ones bearing the same workload. So if you design a (physical) server and feel that 20 GB OS + 80 GB files + 20 GB logs would be appropriate, you will need those same 120 GB for a corresponding VM. You can save some space if you use ‘thin provisioning’ but you need to monitor your datastores for filling up if you do
– as NICs go, for what you describe, you probably aren’t going to need a dual port one, and, as mentioned above, if you go hardware RAID, you can’t even use one.

Hello Evgenij – Thanks also for the quick response! And I’ll definitely take you up on those extra questions 😀

– I thought ESXi would allow me to install multiple virtual machine and that the servers I installed on top of it would be able to see my firewire drives. Is that not the case? Is there another solution you’d recommend to be able to use those external drives? Only one of them has an eSata port and I’d prefer to have something a bit faster than USB 2.0
– Gigabit switch it is then! Will do a bit more research there. Any personal preference between D-Link and Netgear?
– 🙂 @ the drive mirroring. I definitely could use the extra practice! The next step is a backup solution so in case of a HDD failure I hope to be able to restore the VM image in case I need to be back online quickly.
– Do you have any suggestions for backup solutions?
– Good point about VMs space requirement. I am hoping to keep all of my data files on the larger HDD with RAID 1. 20 GB logs? Interesting. I never thought to leave that much space for logs. Will have to do a bit of research here as well.
– As for the NIC I’m now thinking that I’ll just connect any future NAS drive to the switch and use that 16x for the RAID card.

If not, what do you think of the purchasing a second Microserver to run a ‘free’ iSCSI San product such as Nexenta Community Edition which delivers RAID10
The cost would be approx £120 after rebates.

And then the ‘Nexenta’ Microserver would provide a useful shared storage resource for other servers in my office lab setup.
Sure -it would take up space and consume additional power etc, but I’d be interested in peoples thoughts.

Thanks for the super fast reply;
Heres a bit more on my needs
It’s for training classes where myself and a few students would connect into the ESX Server.
There might be 5 or 6 VM’s deployed – but they would have very little concurrent activity
Every VM would be tuned for minimum RAM and it’s entirely non-production use.
The MicroServer has a great advantage – in that it’s small and looks like it could be easily carried.

A single MicroServer is the preferred option – so trying to find a simple list of RAID controllers that I can hunt for on ebay.

I’m have a lot of experience with the P212 and P414’s from HP, though have little experience with the models LSI’s, Adaptecs etc Silicon Image and others have released.
So would appreciate any pointers to model numbers that might be suitable.

Hi,
I am trying to configure my MicroServer under win7 pro x64. I installed the OS onto the 250GB drive in AHCI and then moved it to the ODD bay as I assume I can’t just have 1 drive in bays 1and 2, and then 2*2TB drives in bays 3 and 4. I loaded the 2*2TB drives and switched to RAID in the BIOS, and configured the RAID1 in raid manager (ctrl+F during boot). I can see all 3 drives in device manager, but not in Win explorer…
any ideas? Otherwise I may just reinstall the OS onto the RAID pair and see if that works… BTW, the 2TB drives are caviar green wd20ears… I bought them before I heard that there may be a problem with not being able to turn on TLER….
regards,
Nigel

I did combine the n36l microserver with a HP Smart Array p410 raid controller with 512MB cache (with battery)(controller price in the Netherlands is in or about 270 Euro (now already down to 250 euro)).
The setup is combined with 2 x 4Gb Kingston memory and 2 x 300GB WD Velociraptors.
I made 4 blog entries on installation, VMware ESXi installation, MS Win SBS 2011 installation, etc..
They first 2 can be found here:

I read a few comments and searched the page for Solaris and ZFS, but found no comments regarding these.
I’ve come across some posts on other sites where users have used Solaris 11 Express or even OpenSolaris as the OS on this box.
Anyone here experimenting with ZFS and Solaris? If so, what are your thoughts? Can it handle a few TBs and keep up in a small home as a file server? (after adding more RAM, of course) This would be my main intent with this box.

[…] Seagrave has posted as “somewhat” more verbose analysis of the HP ProLiant Microserver: New HP Proliant MicroServer – a decent vSphere lab server candidate?. His conclusion is pretty much the same one, give us more CPU and a vSphere supported RAID […]

[…] Apple's Mac mini for example uses less than 10 watts at idle and HPs new Proliant MicroServer uses 70 watts max with four 3.5" HDDs. Both are marketed as being energy efficient. Originally Posted […]

[…] NAS Solution Hi, where did i read that Caesium Here(unless it was somewhere else):- http://techhead.co/new-hp-pro…rver-candidate Does say fully loaded config thou, so hard to assume what that means, at least to most peeps diff […]

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My name is Simon Seagrave and I am a Massachusetts (ex UK) based Technical Marketing Consultant working for Dell EMC. I love my work & spend most of my time working with Virtualisation & other Enterprise IT based technologies, in particular VMware, EMC and Dell products.
I am a VMware vExpert (2009 - Present).